Hackable Theme Recommendations?

So I've decided on the final design (after something like 19 iterations all of which I will show everyone in due course) but I feel some of the html that I have been using on my site is slightly out dated since to be honest I have definitely not been keeping track of the comings and goings of the wordpress software and a lot of that code was based on practices of version 1.5 and before.

So the question I pose to everyone is what is the most up to date theme that has super simple html markup and most importantly doesn't try to do too much. What I mean by that is a theme that has not been designed with additional cruft to include for an admin options panel, hooks for widgets that fit within wordpress.com etc. I'm not looking for a mod like K2, although I'll be sure to have a look at some of the things done on K2 for inspiration. I'm looking for something that I can use and modify myself. The look is completely irrelevant as I'll be dumping the css file straight away anyway and starting fresh.

Any recommendations ?

Discussion

9 Responses to Hackable Theme Recommendations?

  • What about Sandbox?

  • Yeah, I've got a couple of the versions installed, but doesn't it have a good deal of hooks and rubbish that tries to be clever? I've not dived into it completely but it does seem to have a bunch of stuff that doesn't really need to be in there unless you want an admin panel for your own personal theme, which honestly, not all that bothered about.

  • Anything over at "plaintxt":http://plaintxt.org would probably work.

  • another vote for sandbox, make sure you grab 0.9.1 .

    none of the, uh, clever rubbish is in there anymore.
    it's just pure semantics :D
    it's actually one of the few themes that hasn't started filing away things into /app /classes /templates /whathaveyou

    all of the code in functions.php goes to creating the semantic body classes

  • What about "Cutline":http://cutline.tubetorial.com/ ?
    OR one of "Brian's Themes":http://www.briangardner.com/themes/ ?
    Tell me what do u think ;)

  • You will love this; http://www.visual-assault.org/wpTheme_basic/

  • Jakob, seems like the basic theme is one in the right direction, except it's for version 1.5 and I doubt it's got all the latest and greatest markup that takes into account where WP has progressed (mainly in terms of speed I would imagine).

  • Actually Plaintxt might be one to look at and cutline looks like one to think about as well. Has anyone used "the templates found here":http://www.tomorrows-laundry.com/ and what those were based on?

  • The ones from tomorrows-laundry look like stripped-down versions of the default theme. Might be a good start.

    Another one I'm looking at at the moment is http://www.miklb.com/blog/2007/geek-life/wordpress-blank-theme-v2beta/